


A Toss(off) - up

by rufflefeather



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, Gift Fic, Multi, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:14:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufflefeather/pseuds/rufflefeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When boys can't deal with their FEELINGS, Cottia intervenes. Silliness ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Toss(off) - up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [i_know_its_0ver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_know_its_0ver/gifts).



> This is for my muse i_know_its_0ver, who wanted Valentine fic. She is also the one who made the amazing note and cards, thank you my lovely. I want to get into a snowball fight with you until we are frozen to the bone and then drink hot chocolate while we look at dinosaur books.

Honest to god, Cottia thinks, how can boys be so _dumb_?

“So is Esca back from his date yet?” she asks instead of voicing this universally known fact.

Marcus shrugs, looking miserable from his toes curled around the bar stool, to the fingers nursing his cup of tea, to the eyes that only shine when Esca is in the room.

Cottia suppresses a sigh and puts the tea towel down next to the sink. Dishes can wait when there is heartbreak happening (has been happening. For _months_ ).

“Why don’t you just tell him?” she says. It would be simple for her to say, ‘He likes you too, you know - his eyes are always on you when you’re not looking’. But she doesn’t. Some things people have to figure out themselves.

“Tell him what?” Marcus asks and for a moment she thinks he’s going to kick the kitchen island as if he is eight years old again and that Seal kid from school has stolen his ball (again).

“That you like him, no, scrap that. That you _love_ him. That you want to be his Valentine. That you wank off to the thought of him fu–”

“Cottia!” Marcus yells, shocked and she grins because there is nothing as pretty as a blushing Marcus. She wants to say more but then they hear a key searching for the front door lock and Marcus is on his feet and out the kitchen. Maybe he’ll go to him, she thinks, but no. There are Marcus’s running footsteps on the stairs and the closing of a door as the one downstairs opens. She sighs. Her psychology class doesn’t prepare her for this.

“Hi!” Esca calls from the hallway and she can hear his shoes flying in all directions but the one of the shoe cabinet she put there last year.

“In the kitchen!” she yells back, and _flomp_ there goes the coat on the stairs instead of the coat rack. Seriously, how did she ever think living with two boys was going to be any different than living with two small children?

“How was your date?” she asks in the same breath as, “tea?” when Esca steps inside. And he _is_ a sight in that grey shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows and those black skinny jeans.

Would it really have been _so_ much to ask that, if she had to live with two slobs who happened to be _very_ good looking, at least one of them could’ve been straight?

“Yes please, and crap,” Esca says, sinking into the same chair Marcus just vacated. Esca frowns a little when his hand feels the mug in front of him, as if wondering why it’s still warm and abandoned.

“Why was it crap?” she asks, flicking on the kettle and dropping a teabag in a ‘We got rid of the kids, the cat was allergic’ mug. Cottia never drank tea, but made it like a pro, Marcus would say. Only Marcus was sulking upstairs.

Esca starts to scowl because Esca doesn’t sulk, and, oh my god, Cottia thinks, I _am_ going to have to intervene.

“He just wasn’t, you know –” _Marcus_ , he doesn’t say.

*

She starts out subtle.

“Esca, Marcus asked me to bring up the toothpaste. Can you drop it in the bathroom for me? I’m doing the ironing.”

“Sure, Lady.”

Cottia grins like a loon and goes to listen to Esca sprinting up the stairs, the –

“Hey Em, here is that too–”

She waits. And waits. But all she hears is this: a door quietly closing, and then another. Marcus shuffling out of the bathroom with nothing but a (very small) towel around his waist and then an awkward silence for three days.

Well.

*

Cottia makes a lovely Christmas dinner, with candle light and porcelain plates and then invents an emergency with one of her uni-friends and leaves them to it.

She comes back to the two of them drunk in the living room, Esca apparently having found it a good idea to attempt climbing the Christmas tree. “I hope,” Cottia yells, because she just wandered the ice-cold streets for _nothing_ on _Christmas fucking Eve_ , “you find a million pine needles in your butt tomorrow!” She slams the door for good measure but still hears their drunken giggles.

Maybe they’ll kiss, at least, she thinks, but no. The next day Esca stoically ignores his hangover while Marcus is hugging the kitchen counter as if it knows the secret of life.

Exams take over and Cottia has to cram and cram because instead of studying during Christmas break, she spent her time playing Aphrodite for the two dumbest boys in the history of dumb boys. That happen to be hot.

(There was the time with the anonymous flowers - what was she thinking - Esca just figured Marcus had a girlfriend and spent a week running ten miles a day.

And the time when she left the photos lying around of that modelling gig Esca did once, but all that happened was Marcus going mooney-eyed over Esca in the white jacket. One of the photos went missing, and wasn’t _that_ something that crept into her own fantasies every once in a while. Together with the image of Marcus in his barely-there towel.

Oh, and don’t forget the time when she had just asked Esca, “Why don’t you just go to him and snog him senseless”, and Esca had looked at her with that hard stare of his while chewing the inside of his cheek. It made her want to snog him herself, or slap him upside the head. She couldn’t decide.)

 

*

So yeah, Cottia ends up doing all-nighters just to pass her exams and doesn't resume her ~~meddling~~ being helpful until it's nearly Valentine.

Her cards are quite ingenious.

Apparently Cottia doesn't only have a knack for dissecting other people’s brains, she can also forge handwriting so well, she wonders if she shouldn’t have applied at MI-5 instead.

 

  
[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/66635741@N05/6873574287/)   


 

Cottia slips the cards underneath their doors so there can be no misunderstandings this time and goes to wait in her own room, heart beating as if it’s _her_ cards they are about to read. (Well, technically they are but they don’t need to know that.)

There is a muffled ‘Hey Cottia,’ when Esca comes home and a ‘Hi C,’ when Marcus does, but she keeps quiet. If they think they’re home alone, there definitely will be sexy-times.

Definitely.

…

…

**. . .**

 

With a bang she throws her door open and storms into Esca’s room. (She figures she has more chance being able to manhandle him rather than Marcus, even though Esca is _much_ stronger than he looks.) She rolls her eyes when she finds him staring at the ceiling with his earbuds in. His eyes are dark and his jaw is set and the card is resting on his belly. (His shirt is slightly rucked up and his abs are showing and – wait. What was she doing?)

  
[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/66635741@N05/6873574311/)   


 

  
[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/66635741@N05/6873574351/)   


 

“You,” she says pulling the buds out of his ears, “come with me.”

Esca is too surprised to object, and lets her drag him by the arm. At least until he sees where they’re going but by then it’s too late. She steps into Marcus’s room.

His eyes are dark and his jaw is set and the card is resting on his belly. Only he is completely topless and honest to god, how is a girl supposed to function around here?

  
[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/66635741@N05/6873574335/)   


  
[ ](http://www.flickr.com/photos/66635741@N05/6873574399/)   


“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she says, grinding her teeth and tugging the earbuds out of a startled Marcus’s ears. She hears a tinny –

_total ecliiipse of the heaaaaart_

and her mouth drops open.

“Seriously?” she asks him, eyebrows high. Marcus squawks and launches himself at his iPod to turn it off. Cottia sees a rumpled photograph on the other pillow and sighs.

“Right,” she says, blocking Esca’s escape, locking the bedroom door and slipping the key in her bra. She crosses her arms and the boys both swallow because they _know_ her ‘this means business’ stance.

(They know it from that time when they hadn’t cleaned the bathroom in three weeks. And from that time when Marcus had broken her little wolf figurine. And from that time her vibrator broke. – Err. Anyway.)

“Neither of you,” she says, pointing first at Esca and then back at Marcus, “is leaving until there has been snogging. Lots. With tongues.”

“But,” Marcus says and Esca just glares.

“Snogging,” she repeats, glaring back. “With. Tongues.”

Esca shuffles his feet a little and Marcus scoots to the edge of the bed but that is all the movement that happens.

It’s like she’s expecting them to have sex right in front of her, the way they are behaving. ( … – never mind.)

“ _Now_ , boys,” she says. “I’m waiting.”

They look everywhere but at each other.

She throws her hands into the air. “Do I really have to do everything myself?”

Cottia grabs Esca by the hair because he’s nearest, yanks his head back and kisses him hard. Whether it’s surprise or something else, without a sound Esca opens his mouth, inviting her to deepen the kiss.

Time becomes a sort of blur and Cottia doesn’t quite know how her hands ended up on Esca’s butt, yet, there they are. So she may as well give it a little squeeze.

Behind her Marcus makes a small keening sound.

“And that,” Cottia says, breaking free, her voice as wobbly as her knees, “is how you do it.”

Esca’s eyes are wide and his mouth red.

“That was so hot,” Marcus murmurs and his face is a little flushed.

“It will be even hotter when you do it yourself,” Cottia says and she reaches in her blouse for the key because if she doesn’t get out of there right this minute, she’ll tear off all her clothes.

Esca and Marcus’s eyes bulge when her hand disappears in her bra as if she’s about to do exactly that. When she pulls out the key, Esca’s hand is on her wrist just as Marcus says, barely audible –

“Stay.”

And since it’s pretty obvious nothing will get done without her around, Cottia stays.

(To help Marcus out of his jeans.

To help Esca out of his t-shirt.

To show Marcus how she just kissed Esca.

To watch if they do it right.

“No, that isn’t how you give head, let me show you.”

“Well, yes I am rather turned on and my vibrator _is_ still broken, so if you don’t mind.”

“And while Esca’s busy down there Marcus, why don’t you suck him off like I showed you.”)

All together, quite a successful scheme.

Maybe Cottia should become a wedding planner instead of brain surgeon/spy.

Or teach boys how to give and take multiple orgasms. It’s a tossup, really.

 

[fin]

**Author's Note:**

> [Here at LJ.](http://rufflefeather.livejournal.com/33984.html)


End file.
